What Do I Want from D&D Next?

It's always a question you ask when a new edition comes out, "What do I want from this game?"

For me, one of the obvious answers is "a community", as discussed earlier. For me, this is the number one thing, will there be a cool community of creative people who like to tell stories, create worlds, and share tales of adventure with? Will there be creative people allowed to play in the sandbox and share their ideas with the community as well?

Admittedly, I am a writer and a game designer myself, so I admit creative bias here. If a publisher creates a platform, I expect to be able to take part in that, and others to have that freedom as well. D&D 3.0 set the bar here, and I feel there's no going back to a closed model again.

That aside, why do I need a new game, especially a version that replaces my shelf-and-a-half of 4th Edition books? Kudos to Wizards for making the right decision to continue supporting all editions so I don't feel forced to, but part of 4th Ed's problem was needing a character builder, and that is now still a subscriber benefit for D&D Insider subscribers. How long will the 4th Edition character builder be supported? It gets tricky when part of the game is a piece of software, and I have never seen a piece of software that was supported for more than a couple years at best. Time will tell, and 4th Edition will likely devolve into an errata-free or limited play style only supported by "what's in the books."

I liked the original 4th Edition enough I can't see that as a bad thing.

Still, what does 5th Edition have to offer? A return to the classic feel, at least that is the vibe I am getting. I also see some 'cute' mechanics like the 2d20 throws instead of modifiers and advantage dice. They are cute because I have seen these before in other games, and while novel, some of these mechanics don't stand the test of time when the novelty wears off. It's like the old color-coded charts from the old Marvel Superheroes game and how those were novel back then, and today they seem oddly strange and clunky. We will see, and I trust the designers have thought about these things, so it's fair to give them a chance and see what happens.

Yes, I am still a bit skeptical, because what a new edition needs is a reason to replace the old one. My old car is fine, why do I need a new one! It's that type of feeling, and I hear the game is streamlined and simplified, so that should be a good thing.

It's also back to classic settings with Faerun and the Forgotten Realms. Honestly, I can't see why they chose Greyhawk for 3rd Edition, the Realms is a huge license, with the cultural familiarity to hold up an entire brand. They took on a lot of animosity with the 4th Edition Realms 'destroying everything' approach, and I feel it is still overdue for a Batman-style reboot with new writers and plots for our beloved characters. While I like classic Greyhawk, sidelining the classic Realms as your premiere setting for two editions feels like a huge mistake over the last 15 years.

Be brave and reboot this property in my lifetime, please! Then we can forget about all this post-spellplague and 2nd Edition induced god-shuffle madness and get back to the original gritty, almost Warhammer-y world. Remember that? That one says "for the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game" on the cover. The one where there weren't any god characters walking around and supposedly solving everyone's problems? I never believed in this urban legend about the Realms anyways, because I didn't run the world that way, nor did I know any who did.

But yes, the Realms started back in AD&D as well. How soon we forget this unexplored little world and it's mysteries.

I can't help but look back at the subtle covers of the old TSR material, and then look at today's 'action movie' covers of unbelievably posed and "in the middle of battle" scenes. They appeal to a different audience I suppose, and they have a different feel to me. When D&D Next holds up the past and says they are returning to that, it is not the past I remember. I suppose that is the problem of a new edition and using the past to sell things.

It is also a problem a reboot solves. Coloring the things we are used to with a new set of glasses is one thing. Saying "we are rebooting everything" makes a change like this a little more acceptable, at least to me. It's like the new Star Trek reboot; they acknowledge the reboot, and we want to see what they do with it. It's harder to do a retrofit and retcon to continue the story, especially if the story has devolved into a mess. Sooner or later, it's time to turn your world into a comic-book like franchise, and evergreen it every once and a while. Classic characters and worlds should never die.

I suppose I didn't answer the question I asked about what I want from 5th Edition, but I feel the answer is in there somewhere.